I have long been fascinated by the myth of Echo and Narcissus, and may finally have cracked its meaning.

First, let’s remind ourselves of the myth. In Ovid’s version, the nymph Echo falls in love with Narcissus, a youth of extraordinary beauty. As a child, Narcissus had been prophesied by Teiresias, the blind prophet of Thebes, to ‘live to a ripe old age, as long as he never knows himself’.

One day, Echo followed Narcissus through the woods as he hunted for stags. She longed to speak to him but dared not utter the first word. Overhearing her footsteps, the youth cried out, ‘Who’s there?’—to which she responded, ‘Who’s there?’ When at last she revealed herself, she leapt to embrace Narcissus, but he scorned her and cast her off. Echo spent the rest of her days pining for Narcissus, and slowly withered away until there was nothing left of her but her voice.

Some time after his encounter with Echo, Narcissus went to quench his thirst at a pool of water. Seeing his own image in the water, he fell in love with it. But each time he bent down to kiss it, it seemed to disappear. Narcissus grew ever more thirsty but would not leave or disturb the pool of water for fear of losing sight of his fine features. In the end, he died of thirst, and there, on that very spot, appeared the narcissus flower, with its bright face and bowed neck.

So what could this myth mean? On one level, it is an admonition to treat others as we would ourself be treated—and in particular to be considerate in responding to the affections of others, which, as with Echo, are often so raw and visceral as to be existential. Poor Echo had no self and no being outside of Narcissus, and after being rejected by him ‘slowly withered away until there was nothing left of her but her voice’. Even her voice, the only thing that remained of her, was his rather than her own.

On another level, the myth is a warning against vanity and self-love. Sometimes we get so caught up in our being, in our ego [Latin, ‘I am’], that we lose sight of the bigger picture and, as a result, pass over the beauty and bounty that is life. Paradoxically, by being too wrapped up in ourself, we actually restrict our range of perception and action and, ultimately, our potential as human beings. And so, in some sense, we kill ourself, like so many ambitious or self-centred people. Treating other people badly, as Narcissus did, is a sure sign of still being trapped in ourself.

Teiresias prophesied that Narcissus would ‘live to a ripe old age, as long as he never knows himself ’, because to truly know ourself is also to know that there is nothing to know. Our self, our ego, is nothing but an illusion, nothing more substantial than the unstable reflection that Narcissus tried in vain to kiss. Ultimately, Narcissus’s ego boundaries dissolved in death, and he merged back into creation in the form of a flower—the daffodil, which, like us, flowers too early and too briefly, and often too brashly, if it flowers at all.

Echo had not enough ego, and Narcissus far too much. The key is to find the right and dynamic equilibrium, to be secure in ourself and yet to be able to dissociate from the envelope that we happen to have been born into.

In Greek myth, the hero has to die and travel through the underworld before re-emerging as a hero. He has to conquer himself, to die to himself, to become more than merely human. For nothing is harder than to come back from hell.

Many cultures have gods, demi-gods, and heroes with both male and female attributes. For example, in Hindu mythology, Shiva is seduced by Vishnu’s female avatar, Mohini, giving birth to the god Shasta (Ayyappa). Shiva himself is often represented as Ardhanarishvara, an androgynous composite of Shiva and Parvati with a body that is male on the right-hand side and female on the left. Arjuna, the great warrior of the Mahabharata, spent a year as a woman, during which he took the name of Brihannala and taught song and dance to the princess Uttara.

The Mesopotamian Ishtar, the beautiful goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex, is sometimes represented with a beard to emphasize her more bellicose side. She could change a man into a woman, and the assinnu, kurgarru, and kulu’u who performed her cult had both male and female features. After Gilgamesh rejected her offer of marriage, Ishtar unleashed the Bull of Heaven, ultimately leading to the death of Enkidu, whom Gilgamesh loved more than anyone: “Hear me, great ones of Uruk/ I weep for Enkidu, my friend/ Bitterly mourning like a woman mourning.”

Hapi, the Egyptian god of the annual flooding of the Nile, brought such fertility as to be regarded by some as the father of the gods: he is generally depicted as intersex, with pendulous breasts and a ceremonial false beard. Hapi might be compared to Tlazolteotl, the Aztec goddess of fertility and sexuality. Tlazolteotl is associated with the moon, and, like the moon in that culture, has both male and female characteristics. Tlazolteotl is nothing if not complex and paradoxical: although she inspires vice, as Tlaelcuani the ‘Eater of Filth’ she is also able, not unlike Jesus, to purify us by absorbing our sins.

To seduce the nymph Callisto, Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, took the form of the goddess Artemis. Zeus took many lovers, but, as Xenophon points out, the only one to be granted immortality was the Trojan prince Ganymede. Other instances of same-sex love in Greek myth include: Apollo and Hyacinthus, Hermes and Krokus, Dionysus and Ampelos, Poseidon and Pelops, Orpheus and Kalais, and Heracles and Abderus, Hylas, and Iolaus. The prophet Teiresias spent seven years as a woman, even giving birth to children in that time. One day, Zeus and Hera dragged him into an argument about who has more pleasure in sex: woman, as Zeus claimed; or, as Hera claimed, man. Tiresias averred, “Of ten parts a man enjoys only one.” Hera struck him blind to punish him for his impiety, but Zeus compensated him with the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven lives.

How might such gender fluidity be interpreted? The union of masculine and feminine elements shows them to be complementary, inseparable, or one and the same, while emphasizing divine attributes such as power, creativity, and boundlessness. In its completeness, the union of the sexes also represents perfection and self-sufficiency, and, by extension, peace and even ecstasy. Spiritual schools tend to look favourably upon sexlessness, especially in the priestly caste, since the attraction between man and woman—or indeed between man and man or woman and woman—gives rise to worldly attachments, such as children and a home, which can detract from spiritual work and the liberation at which it aims. In heroes, gender fluidity may mark out the hero as more than a mere mortal. It may also, like the journey into the underworld, symbolize the search for the self-knowledge that is the hallmark of the hero.